Largest area Nevada earthquake in 65 years cracks main highway between Las Vegas and Reno

Associated Press|

May 15, 2020 | 3:26 PM

|LAS VEGAS

Earthquake damage that has U.S. Highway 95 closed for repairs after a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck early Friday, May 15, 2020 in a remote area west of Tonopah. (AP)

The cracked main highway between Las Vegas and Reno reopened Friday, 10 hours after a predawn magnitude 6.5 earthquake that a researcher called the largest to strike the remote area of western Nevada in 65 years.

No injuries were reported, but officials said goods tumbled from market shelves, sidewalks heaved and storefront windows cracked shortly after 4 a.m. People from Salt Lake City to California’s Central Valley tweeted that they felt the quake.

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Nevada Highway Patrol photos showed cracks on U.S. 95 before crews repaired them about 35 miles (56 kilometers) west of Tonopah. A detour to State Route 360 had added more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) to motorists' trips.

The vast open range east of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada is seismically active, said Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Lab at the University of Nevada, Reno. He ranked Friday's event with twin December 1954 earthquakes at Fairview Peak and Dixie Valley. Kent said those temblors were magnitudes 7.1 and 6.8, respectively.

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The U.S. Geological Survey reported Friday's temblor struck just east of the Sierra Nevada. It was initially reported at 6.4-magnitude.

It was centered about 4.7 miles (7.6 kilometers) deep, the agency said, and dozens of aftershocks were recorded. Kent said a 5.1 magnitude aftershock struck about 30 minutes after the initial quake.

State troopers and sheriff's patrols from Esmeralda and surrounding Mineral and Nye counties checked highways for possible damage. A sheriff's dispatcher in the historic mining boom town of Goldfield said the 112-year-old Esmeralda County Courthouse escaped damage.

Nye County sheriff's Capt. David Boruchowitz reported no damage at the Mizpah Hotel and Clown Motel, two landmark businesses in Tonopah, a mining hub about halfway between Las Vegas and Reno.

Keith Hasty, a Tonopah gas station employee, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that groceries were shaken off shelves and that residents said their televisions shook.

Last July, a 56-year-old backyard mechanic was found dead in Pahrump four days after strong quakes struck near Ridgecrest, California, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) away. Investigators said it appeared a Jeep he was repairing wobbled off its support jacks.

State seismic network manager Ken Smith noted that Friday’s earthquake happened a few miles east of the site of a magnitude 6.2 temblor in July 1986 in California’s Chalfant Valley.

Larger earthquakes in the region in the last century included a 6.5-magnitude temblor in 1934 and a magnitude 6.8 quake in 1932, the state seismology lab said.

A 6-magnitude earthquake in February 2008 damaged hundreds of structures in the northeast Nevada town of Wells, including its historic El Rancho Hotel and Casino. Officials recently announced plans to restore the hotel.